The Selfish Giant - film review

The Arbor director Clio Barnard's excellent second feature is the missing link between City of God and The Social Network, a study of the beauty — and limitations — of the natural-born entrepreneur

5

Friday 25 October 2013 09:14 BST

Not another horse! It’s tempting to wonder if there’s an unwritten law that says Brit dramas indebted to Ken Loach should feature animals (patient and beautiful ones, of course). Clio Barnard’s second offering plays by the book but the creatures on display function as more than handy metaphors; they are truly integral to a fable that, by the time the credits roll, will have you in bits.

(Very) loosely based on a short story by Oscar Wilde, the film centres on impoverished Bradford teens Arbor (Conner Chapman) and Swifty (Shaun Thomas). The pair are chalk and cheese: Arbor’s hard and fast, Swifty’s soft and slow. One day, they discover a kind of paradise in the scrapyard of Kitten (Sean Gilder). The boys bring this giant of a man stolen copper cables; he offers them money and the chance to hang out with his pony. The mood changes, however, when Kitten shows a preference for Swifty. Arbor wants his skills acknowledged and decides to cut Kitten down to size.

Many of the film’s best scenes are full of unspoken emotion. Swifty spends a morning in the empty lobby of his school (he’s been excluded for fighting but his mum hopes the educational atmosphere will exert an improving influence); grown men spend the afternoon dismantling a car (for a fiver). Time is cheap, yet because the cast and script are so good, we don’t view these “victims” with detachment. We feel as if we’re breathing — and sometimes choking on — the same air.

Read interview with The Selfish Giant's director

In 2010, Barnard made The Arbor, a one-of-a-kind documentary about Eighties playwright Andrea Dunbar. Actors lip-synched words provided by Dunbar’s family, a formal innovation that seemed both creative and necessary (protecting subjects who might otherwise have become the focus of abuse). The Arbor made searing sense of a child’s death. While The Selfish Giant is visually more conventional, one could argue it takes a different route to reach the same destination.

It’s grim up North. Yet, strange to say, this is not a depressing film. And, if its Britishness is never in doubt, there’s something international about its vibe.

Pulsing with life, The Selfish Giant is the missing link between City of God and The Social Network, a study of the beauty — and limitations — of the natural-born entrepreneur.

To “live like an animal” is generally seen as a bad thing. Barnard, with great subtlety, asks why.